1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to computer systems and in particular to concurrent installation of components in computer systems. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for providing location codes for concurrent installation of components in computer systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
In certain conventional computer systems, information about failed or failing components may be retrieved (or monitored) via a serviceability application, such as Repair and Verify (R&V). The serviceability application may run on a separate hardware management console (HMC). The serviceability application provides a list of hardware resources, such as field replaceable units (FRUs), which are installed within the computer system and other FRUs that may be concurrently installed into the computer system in the future. This list of hardware resources is indexed with corresponding location codes, which are utilized during fault detection and other processes associated with the FRUs.
Typically, faults detected in a hardware resource will cause the service processor's firmware to log errors that describe the problem with the component. One of the data fields recorded in those error logs is the hardware resource's location code. The location code is a unique ASCII string that provides some identification of which component failed and where the component is physically located in the computer system. Armed with an identification of the failed/failing hardware resource and information such as the location code to pinpoint the resource's actual installation location within the computer system, a system manager (or user) is then able to initiate a concurrent upgrade/install procedure for a new FRU.
Among other things, concurrent maintenance procedures (also called “concurrent install”) allow customers to add a new FRU to a system, configure and activate the new FRU, and begin using the new FRU within the operating system (OS) processes, all while the system is running and without requiring any system outages. While powerful, the ability to complete this concurrent install creates a problem for the supporting software that is required to report the correct location code information to serviceability applications so that the applications may perform the concurrent hardware install. However, the location code information is generally not available until the system manager performs the concurrent install operation.
This problem arises because, in many cases, the service processor's firmware generates location codes without knowing anything about the hardware that could be later installed at that particular location. For example, the firmware may build the location code for a given GX adapter slot, even if no GX adapter occupies the particular slot at the time the corresponding location code is generated. In some instances, however, the firmware must dynamically build a component's location code from the vital product data (VPD) contained on the component itself, e.g., a VPD of an FRU. The need to build the location code from the VPD presents a problem for concurrent install situations because the service processor's firmware has to first know the correct location code of the future resource to recommend an install location and set the FRU up for operation. However, the firmware does not discover that information until the customer actually performs the install of the resource.
The present invention thus recognizes that a need exists for a mechanism (or method) that effectively addresses the problem of incorrect location code assignments for hardware resources that are concurrently installed at some future time after initial location codes are generated/assigned.